Installation

The open-source ati/radeon driver should already be installed and used as the default. This guide focuses on installing the proprietary ATI driver (fglrx/Catalyst).

Before Starting

If you have previously attempted installing Catalyst, remove any leftover files by following the Removing the Driver section.

PLEASE READ FIRST!

Which cards are no longer supported by ATI Catalyst?
The ATI Radeon 9500-9800, Xpress200-1250, 690G, 740G, X300-X2500 (including Mobility RadeonHD 2300, since it is really a DirectX 9 part). See the complete list here.
If your card is on that list, you are limited to open-source drivers on Debian Squeeze/6.0 (and later). If you really need the proprietary Catalyst/fglrx driver, you will have to use Debian Lenny/5.0.x and install Catalyst 9-3.

ATTENTION RADEON USERS

NOTE: If you enter your card information on AMD/ATI's driver page, it will offer you the Catalyst 9-3 driver to download. However, the Catalyst 9-3 driver doesn't support X servers past 1.5, and it will not work with Debian versions later than Lenny/5.0.x! !!!SO BE CAREFUL!!! If you tried to install Catalyst on a system with one of these cards, see the 'Removing the Driver' section to restore the default/pre-installed drivers.

Installing from Debian Repository

This method does not work as of 12th of October 2011. Trying to install fglrx using the method below yields:
E: Package 'fglrx-driver' has no installation candidate
E: Package 'fglrx-control' has no installation candidate
E: Package 'fglrx-glx' has no installation candidate
E: Package 'fglrx-atieventsd' has no installation candidate
E: Package 'fglrx-modules-dkms' has no installation candidate

In the event that the fglrx packages make it back to the wheezy repository, the method will work. For the time being, it does not.

Edit: for me this step didn't work out at all, and I hope someone smarter will sort it out, but here is a post that helped a lot: "just run it with "sudo ./ati*run". Hope this helps. EndEdit

2011/10/17，when trying ./ati-driver-installer-14-12-x86.x86_64.run --listpkg, all I get is that debian is unverified, so you can not generate a deb packages for debian.

Install .debs.

$ sudo dpkg -i fglrx*.deb

Post Install

Generate a new /etc/X11/xorg.conf file

Unfortunately, there is no sure way to generate the ATI version of the Xorg.conf file. It is entirely dependent on your configuration. The following subsections will attempt to address possible (and tested) variations for their respective configurations.

Generic Config

This will work for most people:

$ sudo aticonfig --initial -f

I might be beating a dead horse, but thank you for postnig this!

X2/Dual GPU Cards

If you have an X2 card (e.g. 4870X2 or 5970), use... !!Do not use for two separate cards in crossfire!!

$ sudo aticonfig --initial -f --adapter=all

Dual/Multi Monitors

If you have a dual monitor display (also known as "Big Desktop"), use:

Force use of the new xorg.conf (if necessary)

Some people find that changes to xorg.conf don't get used by the driver. To force the ATI driver to adopt changes made to xorg.conf, use the following command:

$ sudo aticonfig --input=/etc/X11/xorg.conf --tls=1

Test your installation

NOTE: if you don't reboot first, fglrxinfo gives an error message.
Reboot the computer and type

$ fglrxinfo

into the terminal. If the vendor string contains ATI, you have installed the driver successfully. Using fglrxinfo on a system with Catalyst 11-4 and a RadeonHD 4250 returns:

display: :0.0 screen: 0
OpenGL vendor string: ATI Technologies Inc.
OpenGL renderer string: ATI Radeon HD 4200 Series (This line may be different depending on what graphics card you are using.)
OpenGL version string: 3.3.10665 Compatibility Profile Context (This line may be different depending on what graphics card and
Catalyst version you are using.)

Debian wheezy/7.0 and Later

Updating Catalyst/fglrx

DO NOT try to install a new version over an old one. Follow the Removing the Driver section below to remove your existing driver.

Removing Catalyst/fglrx

The uninstall script in the first command will only exist if you downloaded the drivers and installed them directly (rather than building packages as this guide does). Skip the first command if it does not exist.

If you plan on using open-source drivers, you will need to reinstall some packages because Catalyst overwrites or diverts some key 3D libraries with proprietary versions. For more information on this issue, see this Ubuntu wiki page

Catalyst 11.9 and Debian Squeeze x86_64 (October 2011)

Version 11.9 will not install on Debian Squeeze with Kernel >= 3.1. To fix and install proceed as follows.
First uninstall all versions of fglrx you can find, see above. (!!)

Download the driver and extract it thusly:

$ sudo ./ati-driver-installer-11-9-x86.x86_64.run --keep

Enter the newly created directory (will be named fglrx-install.XXXXXX).
Use a hexeditor to find bytes starting at A6B0 with the values e8 53 90 ff ff and replace them with 90 90 90 90 90.
This replaces a faulty free-op with 5 no-ops and fixes the exception thrown by "setup.data/bin/x86_64/setup".
Read up on this at http://disbauxes.upc.es/?p=2964 .

Now the kernel-build-environment for the 3.1 kernel is currently missing in the repositories. To get around that type:

You may need to append an "-amd64" (or similar) to the localversion of the source to have its version-string match the one of the running kernel.
To do so open .config in the current dir with an editor and search for "LOCALVERSION", set that var to "-amd64" or similar.
Configure the kernel using

You may not need to rebuild the whole kernel, installing its headers may be enough,
but i wanted a fresh kernel with a few custom options.
Install your kernel (or just the headers) from the .deb-files that were created by make-kpkg in the directory above.

After this return to the directory where you extracted the driver to and type:

$ sudo ./ati-installer.sh 8.892 --install --force

To load the driver type:

$ sudo modprobe fglrx

And there you go!

Catalyst 11.10 and Debian Wheezy/current Sid (October/November 2011)

Version 11.10 does not work on Debian Wheezy and the latest Xserver 1.11.0, because an ABI incompatibility (this version provides xorg-input-abi-13 and xorg-video-abi-11). We have to wait for AMD to get a new ABI-compatible version (probably Catalyst 11.11).